Government restrictions in the time of the coronavirus

I’ve been struck lately how some friends/colleagues of mine who may even be on opposite sides of the political spectrum (probably, maybe, not sure) have complained online about the restrictions that government has imposed in light of the coronavirus situation. You know, forbidding or discouraging visits to bars and restaurants, closing “non-essential” businesses, closing schools, etc.

Their argument goes something like this: I’m a responsible adult. I know if going out would involve risk to myself or others. I know if I or my family members are compromised or not. I can be counted on to decide for myself what to do, and the government doesn’t have to interfere.

As a former media guy myself, and a former federal employee, I’m pretty skeptical of media hype and info from government reps. I agree that personal accountability is very important. Personally, I’ve been limiting my trips to places with lots of people and taking other measures to protect myself and others.

So in part I agree with my friends and colleagues. I believe the folks I know who are posting such arguments *are* in fact qualified to make such decisions, and I do trust them to do the right thing. But — and I don’t want to sound elitist about this — I also believe that plenty of people are too ignorant, willful, or selfish to act in ways that protect themselves and others.

So I worry. Here’s my thinking: If people could always be counted on to do the right thing, we wouldn’t need laws, or police, or a criminal justice system, right? Everybody knows that it’s wrong to murder, steal, etc. So why do we need laws on the books forbidding such things and penalties in place for people who break those laws? Because people still murder and steal and commit all kinds of horrendous crimes.

Similarly, if people knew in Biblical times what right behavior is, why did Moses have to come down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments written by the finger of God on two stone tablets? Didn’t they know that it was wrong to have false gods before them, disrespect their parents, kill, steal, commit adultery? They probably did. But they did all those things anyway.

So, yeah, I think most (maybe all) people have a built-in compass that tells them what’s the right thing to do. But some people are just selfish. Or they’re ill-informed. Or they just don’t know any better. In short, some people *cannot* be counted on to do the right thing. That’s why the federal government and state governors are imposing restrictions to keep people out of public places as much as possible and reduce the threat to themselves and others. It’s a difficult situation we’re in. But we have to watch what we’re doing. I believe Americans don’t like hardship. We don’t like to give anything up. But we need to accept some sacrifices right now. I don’t want to see any ugliness out there. I hope this situation resolves soon. I wish everyone the best in these challenging times.

The better angels of our nature

Somehow I have gotten on the mailing list of a Catholic agency that’s run by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. I have considerable problems with the bishops and their leadership, but judging from the agency’s website, it looks as if it is doing a lot of good work in the U.S. and overseas. So I applaud them for that.

What strikes me funny is that as part of the fundraising appeals they send me, they include a little card with two things on it: the text of an old prayer to a guardian angel and a gold-colored quarter-sized coin with the image on both sides of a haloed long-robed angel with spreading wings. The prayer is essentially the one I learned as a child in parochial school. (I was raised Catholic, and while I no longer identify with any particular church or denomination, a lot of the church’s teachings, prayers, and rituals have stuck with me.) The prayer on the card goes like this:

Angel of God / my guardian dear, / to whom God’s love commits me here, / ever this day / be at my side / to light and guard, / to rule and guide. / Amen

That’s almost exactly the way I learned it, except for one word, a difference that strikes me as very significant. The version I learned, and prayed with my classmates in school, used the word “entrusts” instead of “commits.”

So I find the use of the word “commits” a bit jarring. Let’s reorder the words and see what we get: “God’s love commits me (here) to my guardian angel.” The commitment seems to be going from me to my guardian angel. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? I’m just a lowly human. Shouldn’t the angel be committed to protecting and guiding me?

That’s why I like the word “entrusts” better. To me, that says that my well-being and right living is entrusted to the angel, who is there to help me. Light, guard, rule, guide. I’m not sure I believe in angels, but I do like the idea of some protective spirit looking out for me.

On a related front, I recall a story the nuns used to tell in school about a pious God-fearing boy who is so good that he has the privilege of actually being able to *see* his guardian angel. (They told a lot of stories.) Whenever the kid goes through a door, he always holds the door open so the angel can go through it first. Eventually, when he grows up, the young man decides to dedicate his life to God, go the the seminary and become a priest. On the day he is ordained, while exiting the church, he holds the door open for his angel as usual. “No,” the angel says, reaching out for the door. “Now *you* go before me.”

I guess the nuns were telling us that story (in part) so that the boys in the class would think about the religious life. Become a priest! You’ll be better than everyone else! You’ll be more exalted than even the angels! For sure, the parish priest was an important guy, if not feared by then certainly kowtowed to by the nuns. When the priest came to the classroom, it was a big deal, and it was clear we’d better be on our best behavior.

Not sure what the moral of this post is. Maybe it’s that people (or angels) who have the job of leading, guiding, and protecting us should always cast themselves as “servant leaders” rather than as our betters.

Departure & Milan, days 1-4, September 23 – 26

Duomo, Milan

As I mentioned in my earlier post, four of us traveled to Italy for two weeks in late September-early October: me; my wife, Cindy; her sister, Nancy; and Nancy’s husband, Mike. When we first started to talk about our trip, we put together tentative lists of what we wanted to see and where we wanted to go, and tried to create a list of as many must-see sights that we could fit into a two-week visit, and developed an itinerary from there. One of the things I most wanted to do was to see an opera in Milan, because I like opera and I had the sense that the best opera in the world was at La Scala (Teatro alla Scala) in Milan.

I went to the La Scala website and found that during our tentative travel time, there was a performance of Donizetti’s “L’elisir d’amore” (The Elixir of Love) on September 25. Partly because of that, I think, and because the airfare was cheaper than flying into Rome, we chose to fly into and out of Milan. This worked out fine. Milan is a major airport and actually the largest airport in Italy, I think. (More on the opera below.)

So, we flew out of JFK on Emirates on Monday, Sept. 23, at 10:20 p.m. NY time. We flew through the night, and — it being an eight-hour flight, and Italy time being six hours later than NY time, we arrived just after noon the next day, Tuesday, Sept. 24. We had each checked one bag. So, by the time we collected our luggage and took a train from the airport to the main train station, a subway ride from there to a streetcar stop, and a streetcar ride from there to our Airbnb, much of the afternoon was gone.

(The streetcar, by the way, made an odd rhythmic whooshing sound, like the heartbeat you hear during a sonogram. “The streetcar sounds like an ultrasound,” said one of us — Cindy, I think.)

Canal, Milan

Footbridge over canal, near the St. Christopher church (background)

I had not known until about two weeks before our departure, from a guidebook I bought in the Barnes & Noble in Lewisburg, that Milan once had a substantial canal system and that a couple of the canals remain. (They were built to bring stone for the cathedral from the quarry.) By crazy coincidence, our Airbnb was in the canal neighborhood and our streetcar stop was near a small footbridge over the canal. The footbridge was just a few steps away from a little church named after St. Christopher (San Cristoforo sul Naviglio), which I guess was apt, since according to the legend St. Christopher carried the Christ child across a river. So the location of the church near a bridge is apt, I guess, and it’s also apt that Christopher is the patron saint of travelers.

St. Christopher mural

Just a few doors away from the St. Christopher church was the mural above, painted on the back wall of a building that looked like a warehouse. The luminous quality of the painting, and its separate sections, reminded me of a stained-glass window in a church, but it was only paint on a wall.

Gran Bar Watt 2

After we got settled in the apartment, we walked around the neighborhood near that church and later that evening (9/24) had dinner at the Gran Bar Watt 2, a small family-run restaurant on the ground-floor of our apartment building. (The entrance to our apartment was the big wooden door to the left of the green-and-white-striped awning.) We picked four dishes out of a case and they prepared them for us. The owner’s dad (we assume), a charming white-haired old guy who didn’t speak much English, served us and kept us entertained. I was wondering if the dishes were regional specialties, so I went over to the woman behind the counter and said: “The dishes we’re having — piatti regionale?” She said yes — from the Abruzzo region, if memory serves.

Spires and statues, Duomo, Milan

View from the roof of the Duomo, Milan

Galeria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan

On Day 3, Sept. 25, we started our day with a visit to the Duomo. It was amazing, as I said in my first post. It sits like a gleaming wedding cake at one end of a large piazza. Named after the cathedral, it’s called the Piazza del Duomo (Cathedral Square.) It is huge — covers more than three U.S. football fields put together. It’s dominated by the Duomo, an archway leading to the Galeria Vittorio Emanuele II (a big arcade/shopping mall of high-end shops), and an equestrian statue of Victor Emanuel, and other buildings. La Scala is nearby, and in fact we had lunch that day right next to the opera, at the aptly named Bar Della Scala. We sat outside and had wine and sandwiches. My veggie sandwich there was actually not that impressive, but everybody else liked their choices, and every other bit of food we had in Italy was amazing.

We saw long lines outside the Duomo and went to the Duomo’s “Fast*Track” ticket office. We paid a little extra for the “fast track” tickets, I think, but we did not have to wait in a long line, and found ourselves actually walking on part of the cathedral roof, among the spires and statues. I’ve toured cathedrals before, but never had that kind of vantage point.

Opera poster

That evening we had dinner at a restaurant on the square, “Il Mercato del Duomo,” again sitting outside. The pigeons were fearless, even landing on unoccupied tables, but it was a great meal, and later we went to the opera. We were jammed into a tiny box that was five stories high and the seventh from the main stage, with no knee-room at all, directly across from a huge chandelier that hangs in the center of the hall. I enjoyed the opera a lot, despite the cramped seating and the need to swivel our heads pretty hard to the left. The singing was amazing. You can tell that the singers are *not* wearing microphones. The sound is all them, not amplified, not coming out of speakers in the auditorium. We could hear everything clearly, despite being so much higher than the stage and halfway to the back of the auditorium — those guys really know how to project! The big-hit aria of “L’Elisir d’Amore” is “Una furtiva lagrima” (“A furtive tear”) sung by the tenor about his lady love. Got a *big* round of applause and several enthusiastic “bravos” from the audience. I do have to say, though, that the stagecraft and costumes were not as good as I thought they would be. I expected to be blown away, but they were just OK. Cindy said the soldiers looked like Oompa Loompas, from the original “Willy Wonka” movie with Gene Wilder. That’s not too far off.

Fun fact: “L’Elisir d’Amore,” by Donizetti, had its world premiere in Milan in 1832. The comic opera (love story, happy ending) is in two acts, and took about two hours, so by the time we got back to the apartment, it was probably after 11 p.m. Had been a long day for us, but a good one. The next day, Thursday, Sept. 26, we left Milan and took a train to Venice ….

Two weeks in Italy: High points, low points, revelations, & lessons learned

With my wife, her sister, and her sister’s husband, I recently spent two weeks vacationing in Italy. We visited Milan, Rome, Venice (with side trips by boat to Murano and Burano), and Florence (with side trips by train to Pisa and Lucca). It was an amazing trip, and I hope to blog in detail about every day of the trip. But to get me started, I thought I’d serve up some more or less general observations about our adventures and misadventures: just a few high points, low points, revelations, and lessons learned. Here goes:

Wow moment #1. We flew into Milan, which has one of the country’s major airports, I think mainly because my wife and I (mostly I) wanted to see an opera at La Scala (full name: Teatro alla Scala.) We arrived 9/24, and the opera was the next night. That first day, after getting settled in our very nice AirBNB, we took the Metro (subway) to the Duomo (cathedral). Most cathedrals I’ve seen in Europe are kind of gloomy on the outside: tall, sooty, and overbearing. Milan’s was white and bright and stood a bit apart from the other buildings on the square, like a jewel or a wedding cake. Coming out of the Metro, rounding the corner, and seeing the Duomo for the first time was definitely our first wow moment. You could actually walk around on part of the roof, among the statues on those many spires. There were many wow moments, but I thought I’d share just one for now.

Pickpockets! I almost had my pocket picked on the Metro in Rome, on our way to the main train station. The car was not crowded, but a young well-dressed woman with a large black leather bag was standing very close to me. Her bag was actually touching my right hip. After several seconds, I realized that her bag kept bumping against me and that I couldn’t see her left hand. Finally (I’m a little slow) I glanced down at the right-hand pocket of my “pickpocket-proof pants” from Clothing Arts, which has a buttoned flap over the pockets, zippers and snaps to close the pockets, and some hidden zippered pockets inside the main pockets. I had secured everything before getting into the Metro system. Only then did I realize that the flap was unbuttoned and the zipper was partly undone. I clapped my hand over my wallet (still there, thank God), moved away, and said to her, “You think you’re pretty tricky, don’t you?” She gave me a mock-innocent, mock-insulted look that seemed to say “What are you talking about?” But I knew that if I hadn’t been wearing those pants, and if I hadn’t finally paid attention, she would have made off with my wallet and I wouldn’t have been the wiser. In Rome especially, be vigilant on the subway and especially on buses #64 and #40, which famous tour guide writer Rick Steves and even the locals warned us about. Don’t be scared, don’t be paranoid, but be vigilant!

European appliances. They’re different and mostly better, I think. For instance: Toasters have little baskets with handles to hold the bread. So when the toast is ready, you can lift it out and not risk electrocuting yourself by sticking a butterknife into the slot and trying to get toast fragments out. The “Moka”-style coffeemaker, originally made by a guy named Bialetti in the 1930s, is great! (The day after I got home, I ran down to Target to get one.) Some of the AirBNBs we stayed at had a strange little automatic espresso maker that usually didn’t work. It had a Keurig-style pod that you would put in sideways. But the mechanism often didn’t work right, and the pod would just drop into a receptacle below without the water flowing through it. So we usually used the Moka, which makes great strong coffee. All our accommodations had wifi, which came in handy after a long day of touring. Don’t forget your electric plug adaptors and/or voltage converters!

Camera drop. In Florence, in the Boboli Gardens, I accidentally dropped my camera. Thought I had the strap around my neck, but I didn’t, and so it fell to the gravel path and didn’t work after that. Stupid! Anyway, the main outcome was that the photo of Neptune’s fountain in the gardens (above) was the last one I took in Italy with my digital SLR. Had a hard time finding a camera store in Florence, but finally saw a place with a “Kodak film” sign outside that we must have passed 5-6 times without noticing it. It was more of a tobacco shop with a few cameras for sale, and the proprietor didn’t speak English. So I pantomimed dropping my camera and then said “Non funziona” — meaning, “Doesn’t work.” He understood, shook his head, waved his hand, and said, “In Firenze no! Milano.” It so happened we were heading back to Milan the next day, but it was the end of the trip, so I didn’t bother to look for a camera store there.

Using the language. Before we left on the trip, using Babbel and a couple of “basic Italian” books, I picked up a few phrases and a little bit of the grammar — which is pretty tricky, by the way. I couldn’t really speak the language, but I knew how to say a few key phrases and to kind of understand what the locals were saying. It’s really worth it, even though most people speak English and many signs/menus etc. are in Italian and English. I learned from a waiter in one restaurant how to say “One more, please” — the context being a terrific Moretti beer I was having — and tried it out the next night at a restaurant in the Trastevere section of Rome. (See photo above — btw, that is *not* me in the photo.) I held up my empty glass and said “Un’altra, per favore.” The waiter seemed to like this and/or to find it funny and he said enthusiastically, “Come no!” — a combination of “of course” and “why not?” I think that one little phrase helped us to not only connect with the guy a little bit, but also to get really good service the whole time.

Planes, trains, & automobiles. We flew over and back on Emirates, on a jam-packed Airbus, and had no trouble at all getting around on mass transit in Italy. The customer service people were (generally) great in the train stations, the arrival/departure boards were easy to figure out, the subway maps made sense, and we never got off at the wrong subway stop or got on the wrong subway line. The only downside was the attempted pickpocketing on the Metro in Rome, and that ended happily. In Florence, there is an absolutely terrific tourist information office right across the street from the Firenze SMN train station. (The SMN stands for Santa Maria Novella, a beautiful church near the station.) I gotta say though, in Rome there was not much help for the wide-eyed tourist, especially at touristy sites like the Colosseum (beware of people offering you “no lines, no waiting, special price today”). And in the Milan train station, I just could *not* find the tourist info office. The signs seemed to point straight ahead, then upstairs, then right, then left, and railway staff in the station pointed me in completely different directions. I gave up. One of the best things we did was to hire an Allentown-based limousine (a big Cadillac Escalade, actually) to pick us up at JFK and take us back to my sister-in-law’s place in Topton, where we had left our car. We were totally beat after the long trip and the flight back, it was late at night, and driving ourselves home would *not* have been a good idea.

Wow moment #2. You walk out of the main train station in Venice and you’re just a few steps away from the Grand Canal and a good view of the Chiesa San Simeon Piccolo, a large church with a peaked green dome. (See above.) We just had to stand there for a few minutes with our suitcases and take it all in. I single out these two wow moments, but there was beauty everywhere and wow moments in abundance. The only halfway unattractive thing I remember seeing during the whole trip was the train station in Florence, a modern unadorned shoebox of a structure faced with rough plain brown stone.

Art is for people’s sake. In Rome, we toured the Vatican museums and saw the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and I’m glad we did. (Actually, I enjoyed a Michelangelo fresco on the wall, with a Judgment Day theme, more than the ceiling. But that’s another story.) I’m glad we went through the Vatican museums and saw the Sistine Chapel — you see (briefly) a lot of beautiful art and artifacts. But you’re also on your feet for a good two hours, being hustled through endless narrow corridors and jostled by other tourists, and trying to keep up with your tour guide. The thing I liked better, in every city we visited, was to duck into as many churches as we could and spend at least a few minutes looking around. That’s where you really see some great art, in the setting it was meant to be seen in. In just a handful of churches, for instance, we saw architecture, paintings and sculpture by Michelangelo, Tintoretto, Giotto, and Velasquez, to name just a few of the artists. It was amazing, there were no lines, and there was no charge — unless you wanted to put a euro or two in the offering box and light a candle, which was totally voluntary.

Well, I’m sure this blog could use some more polish, but I’m ready to send this out into the world and move on to the next installment. Thanks for reading.

How to fight for the issues you care about

The following blog, outlining principles and pointers for advocating for your cause with government officials, appeared first (on Feb. 18, 2019) in slightly different form on the Bennis Public Relations website. Many thanks to Stephanie Shirley of Bennis PR for inviting me to “guest blog” on her site.

No matter who you are, or where you live, someday, somehow, you will want something from your government, and you will need to know how to interact with your elected officials to get what you want. Maybe you want a stop sign on your corner, because drivers are racing by and endangering kids in your neighborhood. Maybe there’s a bill moving through your state legislature that you want to support — or oppose. Maybe your child has diabetes, and you think the federal government should invest more in diabetes research.

No matter what the issue, if you want to change things, you have to know how to make things happen. My hope is that this post will help you do that, by giving you 10 simple steps you can follow that will help you make a difference. But before I get into that list, here are a few principles for effective advocacy. (These are drawn largely from The One-Hour Activist, by Christopher Kush – a great guide to influencing lawmakers and others. You can read an excerpt from the book here.)

Principle 1: Where you live
If you want to change something in your municipality, at the state level, or nationwide, you need to know who’s running the show. Is it the mayor? City Council? Borough Council? Township supervisors or county executives? A state representative or senator? Your member of Congress or U.S. senator? Whoever it is, you have to establish that you live in the area where you want the change and make sure that you reach out to the people who can make a difference.

Principle 2: How and how well you communicate
Whether you send an email or a personal note, pick up the phone, or visit a politician’s office, you need to know how to cut through the noise and make sure your communication is noticed (and acted on). Some of the key points are: keeping it short and simple, making it personal, and making it compelling. I’ll say more about these points below.

Principle 3: Who else is asking for the same thing?
If 20 or 50 or 100 people in your neighborhood want that stop sign, in addition to you, it’s more likely to happen. If a substantial number of voters in your state legislative district want the same outcome as you on that bill, along with those in every other legislative district across your state, you’re more likely to get what you want. If a significant number of residents of the 435 U.S. congressional districts and the 100 U.S. senatorial districts across the country want more funding for diabetes research, it’s probably going to happen.

So, here’s what you can do to get started.

1. Know your elected officials. You probably know who your local officials are and who’s the governor of your state. But do you know who represents you in your state legislature? How about in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate? Wherever you live, you should be able to find your federal and state (and some local) officials via an official U.S. government site.

2. Get to know them as individuals. As much as you can, try to build a long-term, personal relationship with your elected officials. Let them know who you are, where you live and work, and how your family, your background, and your experience have developed your political leanings and defined your needs.

3. Keep things short and simple. Two pages max for a letter, but less is usually better. Tell them where you live, that you vote, and that the issue you’re writing about is important to you. Don’t get bogged down in statistics or the legislative process. Just tell them why the issue is important to you personally and what you want them to do.

4. Email, phone call, letter, personal visit? A former state legislator and longtime lobbyist I know says that nothing beats a personal note – handwritten or typewritten, doesn’t matter. Make sure to include your home address and your personal reasons for requesting action -– that makes the issue come alive for the elected official. Screening of U.S. mail means a letter will take longer to reach your lawmaker, but it will get there. (If the issue is fast-moving, pick up the phone. But have a script to work from.)

5. Make a connection. Even an email can jump out of the pack. I once wrote an email to former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who didn’t know me from anybody. But because I mentioned my background at the National Governors Association (which Rendell was chairing at the time), and congratulated him warmly on bringing the NGA meeting to the state, my email got past Rendell’s “gatekeepers,” he read it, and he sent me a personal reply.

6. Connect with others who share your views. Your voice is important and essential. But (per Principle 3, above), others need to raise their voices too. So, find ways to connect with like-minded individuals. Local issue? Maybe an environmental or civic group, club, trade association, or Chamber of Commerce in your area can help. For a statewide or national issue, same principle applies – but in addition to people who live in your community, you need to team up with people in other legislative districts across the state and congressional districts across the country. Here, a group like the American Diabetes Association or AARP may help.

7. Don’t ever send a robot letter! If you’re taking part in a group effort, you have to stick with the message – everybody has to ask for exactly the same thing. But don’t ever send the group’s letter as it comes to you. Always personalize your communications to elected officials. There’s immense power in telling your story and saying: “I live in your district and I vote. This issue is important to me, and I want it to be important to you too.” For instance: If you’re looking for increased funding for diabetes research, it’s much more powerful to share personal stories about your struggles to keep your child safe and healthy than it is to cite dry statistics. A friend of mine has a child with Type 1 diabetes: I’m always moved when I hear her stories about her constant struggles with monitoring her son’s blood sugar levels, about having to rush to his school when his pump ran out of insulin, or about her hopes for improved treatment or a cure. If her stories move me, they would move a legislator too.

8. Make your issues their issues. I picked up this phrase – “Make your issues their issues” — from a highly effective higher education lobbyist I’ve worked with. Let’s say you went to a public university, and you want your state legislators to back healthy public funding for your alma mater. (That’s what I urged alumni and other friends of Penn State to do when I was director of the Penn State Grassroots Network.) I often urged alumni to tell their elected officials (A) how their Penn State degree made it possible for them to become successful in life and in work; (B) how Penn State makes a Pennsylvania a better place through its teaching, research, and public service; and (C) how Penn State’s two dozen locations across the state educate *their* constituents, who are very likely to stick around and put their education to work at home, thereby strengthening the local community and boosting the local economy.

9. Become a resource. As your relationship with your elected officials grows, help them out. Don’t just write them when you want something. Keep your finger on the pulse of your community and let them know what’s going on. They’ll get to know you and they’ll value your input, and they’ll be eager to hear from you when you need something.

10. Be respectful, and always say thanks. Always, always, always be polite and respectful in your communications with elected officials. And say thank you. They probably hear lots more complaints than praise, so when they do something you like, drop them a line and let them know you appreciate it.

Well, this barely scratches the surface, but I’d better wrap this up. I hope these principles and pointers are helpful to you. Remember, your voice can and does make a difference – if you’re smart about how and when you use it, and you join with other people who want the same thing. It’s not only gratifying to be part of the process and know you’re making a difference – it can be fun too!

Blogging at the Starbucks: Installment #4 of my cataract surgery saga

I’m at a Starbucks near Harrisburg , drinking a tall mocha (no whip) as my wife wanders from store to store at The Shoppes at the Susquehanna Marketplace, looking for the ideal gift for somebody (unspecified) that may just pop up at any moment. Not the way I shop, but no matter.

Yesterday (Dec. 13) was cataract surgery No. 2, on my left eye. (Btw, same disclaimers as in the previous installments: This is just a retelling of my personal experience, not medical advice, and any direct or indirect quotes I may include are not guaranteed 100 percent verbatim. But they’ll be pretty close.) This morning was my day-after checkup with my surgeon in Hershey. Yesterday’s procedure went well, and no stitch was required. That has made a huge difference. (OK, now I’m in the passenger seat of the car, heading back home. I’m still not supposed to be driving.) Vision in my left eye is a bit blurry, but much better than it was in my right eye at the comparable time after the first surgery, and it’s already improved significantly from yesterday afternoon.

(After my first surgery (Nov. 15), the doc had to put a stitch in the cornea of my right eye to stop a leak. The stitch tugged on the cornea and distorted my vision, but after it was removed, within seconds my vision started to improve. It’s now about 20/25, and I’m hoping for similar results in the right eye.).

This morning, they put numbing drops in my eyes to check the pressure. Right eye was about 14 and the left eye was about 22, if memory serves. The right eye pressure is within the normal range, but I sense still a bit high. More on that shortly. The higher pressure in the left eye reflects the trauma of yesterday’s surgery, but it’s way lower than the post-op pressure of my right eye, which was about 36.

Two things I reported to the doc that I didn’t expect:

1. Colors in my left eye (the one just operated on) seem a bit truer and brighter than in the right. I would have expected they would both be the same. The doc said I got the same brand and model of lens in both eyes, and he didn’t seem to think the disparity was significant or anything to worry about. I’m guessing they’ll be virtually identical once both eyes settle down.

2. I noticed when looking at my Xmas tree lights recently (and oncoming headlights last night) — through the right eye only — that there’s a bit of a “starburst” effect around bright lights. It’s not severe, and the doc thinks this is maybe happening because the right eye is still a bit swollen. Though the surgery on the right eye was done Nov. 15, the stitch wasn’t taken out till Dec. 3.

My next followup is set for Jan. 18. I’m looking forward to even more improvement by then, as my bionic eyes continue to settle in. OK, that’s it for now.

A song my mother used to sing

When I was a kid, I remember my mom singing a song that I thought was called, “Oh, the Moon Shines Bright on Charlie Chaplin.” I think she had learned it from her father. Lately, I have found myself wondering if it was a “real” song, or if it was just a parody song that somebody made up and got passed around. Turns out it’s kind of both.

More below on that, but first, here’s how my mom used to sing the song, more or less:

“Oh, the moon shines bright on Charlie Chaplin / His shoes are crackin’ / They need a blackin’ / And his old gray suit, it needs a patchin’ / Where he’s been scratchin’ / Mosquito bites.”

Here’s an old recording of the song, worth a listen if only for the singer’s delivery, which features some heavily rolled R’s, and the old-timey arrangement.

Looks like the song was written and recorded during the First World War, when Chaplin was being criticized for not enlisting and not fighting in the war. In the recording I’ve linked to above, the lyrics go like this:

“When the moon shines bright on Charlie Chapin / His boots are cracking / For want of blacking / And his little baggy trousers, they want mending / Before we send him / To the Dardanelles.”

According to Wikipedia and other online sources, this was a popular song among schoolchildren, soldiers, and others, who made up and sang a lot of their own words to the melody. The song itself, as recorded, may in fact have incorporated some of these “made-up” lyrics that were being sung on playgrounds or in taverns or wherever. Evidently the song was still popular years later — maybe even into World War II — because my mom was born in 1932 and I’m guessing she first heard it during those war years.

The song was also used in a 1969 movie called “Oh! What a Lovely War,” The film was directed by Richard Attenborough and starred, well, a bunch of British actors you’ve probably never heard of. I did recognize the name of Ian Holm among the cast members — he had a role in “The Fifth Element” with Bruce Willis, if I recall correctly.

Finally, the Chaplin song was sung to the melody of a popular song called ““Red Wing”, which was written in 1907. According to Wikipedia, the music for the verse in “Red Wing” was based on a Robert Schumann composition!

Dave Shaffer, I am catching up to you! (Being the third installment of my cataract surgery saga)

So, you may be asking yourself, who is Dave Shaffer? Well, like me, he is a former Penn State employee who is about my age and who recently had cataract surgery. He already had both eyes done, whereas I had the procedure done on my right eye on Nov. 15 and have the surgery on my left eye scheduled for Dec.13.

Dave’s first surgery was done on exactly the same day as mine, if memory serves. I have been pretty ticked off at Dave (not really — I was definitely envious, though) because he had significant improvement in his vision about 24 hours after his surgery, which he was posting about on Facebook, while I had to wait more than a week to experience the same kind of results. But now I am catching up to him, Gott sei dank!

Same caveats and disclaimers I put forth in my first installment apply here. Mainly, that I’m just reporting my own experiences, not giving anybody advice, not claiming that I’ve described every detail of the various procedures with complete accuracy, and not guaranteeing that the quotes are 100 percent verbatim (though they’re pretty close).

A little quick recap before the rest of my update: After the surgery, they put a plastic shield over my eye and affixed it there with some tape that has a cloudy appearance. So I didn’t realize right away how cloudy my vision was, because of the shield and the tape. But when I took the shield off per the surgeon’s directives, I was appalled to see how cloudy my vision was in the right eye. I could see colors and shapes but that was about it. Couldn’t read anything.

My first follow-up appointment was the day after the surgery, the second was a week after that, and the third was yesterday, Monday, Dec. 3.

In a week or so after the initial follow-up appointment, my vision in the right eye improved considerably. But it was still fuzzy, and that troubled me. In my first two follow-up meetings with the surgeon, he said that was because (1) my cornea was swollen and (2) he had put a stitch in my eye, which was tugging on my cornea and distorting my vision.

I believed him, but I was anxious and antsy and apprehensive.

So, that’s how I went into my third follow-up appointment: anxious, antsy, apprehensive. I felt that way because of the blurry vision but also because I knew he would probably take out the stitch, which would involve sticking a needle into my eye. I mean, what sounds more like torture than having needles stuck into your eye? He had said to me, “I have a very steady hand,” but still….

So, on Dec. 3, I waited a long time in the waiting room (big backups that day), then saw a nurse, then a resident, then my surgeon. The resident numbed up my eyes to check the pressure, which was higher than on the previous visit, but still within the normal range. She said my surgeon would take out the stitch.

So, finally the surgeon comes in and looks at my eyes through the standard big piece of equipment that eye docs use to examine your eyes and figure out the prescription for your glasses. He put two more drops in my eye, the second of which stained the tissue he had given me with dark brown spots.

He inserted a short thin needle into my eye (so says my wife, I couldn’t really tell), and then a narrow blade to cut the thread, and then used what he called “the jeweler’s” (narrow, surgical-steel tweezers, I believe) to pull out the stitch. I could sense what he was doing but felt no pain. One of the drops had been a numbing drop. While he was doing this I had my chin on the chin rest and my forehead against the forehead strap.

He told me a couple of times to keep looking straight ahead. “Steady,” he said. “Steady. Almost done. Done.”

Almost immediately, once the stitch was out, my vision started to improve. I went from probably 20-60 to nearly 20-20 in less than a minute. “You’re reading some of those letters at 20-20 or 20-25,” he said.

I was thrilled. “Great work, doc!” I said. I clapped him on the shoulder heartily and repeatedly. He was modest. “This is what I do,” he said. And then got back to business.

“Are you confident to go ahead with your next surgery?” he asked me.

“Yes!” I said emphatically.

I felt a little pain that evening and overnight, but the generic version of Excedrin Extra Strength (acetominaphen, aspirin, caffeine) took care of it just fine. I’ve been feeling good today and enjoying my sharpened vision. My distance vision should be fine without glasses. I’ll probably need weak prescription glasses to read, or maybe just drugstore “cheaters,” but generally speaking the vision in the right eye is much clearer than in the left eye. And the colors are much brighter and truer, which is a delight.

Follow-up appointment with my eye surgeon

Today (11/26/2018) I had a follow-up appointment with the eye doc who did my cataract surgery on Thursday, 11/15. My vision is much improved from where it was immediately post-op, but still has a ways to go. Colors are brighter and clearer, but the vision in my right eye is still blurry.

Same caveats and disclaimers apply as in my previous post.

During the surgery, the doc had put a stitch in the cornea, to repair a leak. I’m not sure what was leaking into what. He decided to leave the stitch in today. He says that the stitch is pulling on the cornea, and that’s what’s distorting my vision.

The pressure in my right eye is way down, which is really good. The day after the surgery. It was a 36. Today is was 11, which is normal (although the pressure can vary a lot from person to person and there’s a wide range of normal). I asked one of the docs today what units that measurement was in. Millimeters of mercury, she said. If you imagine the eye is a tire, just as you can get a sense of your tire pressure by giving the tire a kick, the instrument they put on your eye gives it “a gentle kick” and measures the pressure in mm of mercury.

“Like a barometer” measures atmospheric pressure, I said. Exactly, she said.

I wish my eye was in better shape by now, but the doc is confident everything will be fine. “Everybody’s different,” he said, and he assures me my vision will be clear up. I’ll see him again a week from today. I hope everything is cleared up by then. Surgery on my left eye is set for Dec. 13, and if the vision in my right eye isn’t crystal-clear by then, I’ll be very reluctant to go ahead with the second surgery on that date.

More next week.

My cataract surgery experience

On Thursday, Nov. 15, I had cataract surgery done on my right eye. My regular eye doc (optometrist) had been recommending for a while that I have it done sooner or later, so I decided for various reasons to have both eyes done before the end of the year. I’ve talked a bit about the surgery on Facebook, and a couple of people expressed interest in knowing more about how it went.

Hence this blog. But before I go any further, a few caveats and disclaimers:

1. I’m not an expert on the procedure, so I don’t guarantee that my description of the surgery will be 100 percent accurate.

2. Anything I put inside quotation marks is *not* guaranteed 100 percent verbatim. But the quotes will be pretty close.

3. This is just about *my* experience, which may not be typical. This is *not* medical advice of any kind. I’m not a doctor, and I don’t even play one on TV.

OK, here we go. I admit I was a little apprehensive about going in for the surgery. The idea of somebody cutting on my eye was not one I was happy to entertain. So I made sure that I chose a facility with a good reputation and a surgeon who is experienced and board-certified, and made sure I knew what my out-of-pocket costs would be.

Prepping for the surgery involved starting using eyedrops (polymyxin B sulfate and trimethoprim solution) two days before the procedure, four times a day, in the eye to be operated on — the right. My surgery was scheduled for 9:20 a.m. on Thursday, and I was instructed to eat nothing after midnight the day before and have no water in the morning. I was allowed a few sips of water to take my usual meds in the morning, but that was it. I missed having my coffee that morning.

My wife, Cindy, drove me to the appointment and back. You get some pretty serious sedation and/or anesthesia, so you can’t drive after the procedure. My eyes got another look-see in an exam room, and they gave me some eye drops to dilate the pupil and numb the eye so they could check the pressure. Then I went to another room where I put on a gown and they started an IV drip. I waited in that area for an hour or two, then was whisked away to the OR. I think they started the sedation before I left the waiting area, because things seemed to go awfully fast once they put the hairnet on me and they wheeled me to the OR.

The sedation leaves you awake and able to respond to commands, but it made me groggy. The surgeon had told me it’s best to stare straight at the bright lights in the OR and don’t move. “If you have to cough or anything, just let us know, we’ll take out the instruments, you can cough, and then we’ll go back in.” Once you’re in the OR, they drape your head so just the eye is exposed. “If your nose is itchy, let us know, and we’ll scratch it for you through the drape.”

The procedure is roughly this: the surgeon makes a small incision in the eye, inserts a probe or two, uses ultrasound to break up the cataract, suctions it out, and inserts an intraocular lens or IOL; they’re made of plastic, acrylic, or silicone. I have a fixed-focus monofocal lens, meaning my distance vision should be fine but that I’l probably need to use glasses or drugstore “readers” for reading. If you want to know more about the procedure, here’s the Mayo Clinic web page about it.

In the OR, I believe, they put some more numbing drops in my eye. During the procedure, I had the sense that they put some “lid-lockers” on my eyes to keep the lids wide open, as in the scene from the film version of  ‘’A Clockwork Orange.” I didn’t feel any pain at all, but I sensed some pulling and tugging and a feeling like my eye was being irrigated or flushed once or twice. But I’m just reporting my sensations, or maybe more accurately my memories of the sensations during the procedure.

I was wondering if I’d actually see a scalpel blade coming at me and whether that would make me flinch — but no. All I saw were the lights. I think I recall the surgeon asking me to look in certain directions a couple of times. I also recall him saying two things during the surgery: One, “You win the prize for the biggest cataract today,” and two, “I put a stitch in it.”

(And now I’m ticked off because WordPress failed to save two or three paragraphs I wrote and now I have to recreate them.)

When I got back to the recovery room, I realized I had a clear plastic shield taped over my eye. It reminded me of the Jason Voorhees hockey mask from “Friday the 13th.” (I’ll post a photo when I can figure out again how to do that. See immediately below for the photo: I’m editing this now on Saturday morning, 11/24, and thank goodness my daughter is here; she helped me place this photo.)Because of the shield and tape, I didn’t realize right away just how blurry my vision was immediately after the procedure. I had expected instant clarity, but instead it was like looking through a window smeared thickly with petroleum jelly. I could see colors and shapes but that was about it. At my follow-up appointment the next day, the doc took the shield off but said I should wear it while sleeping for the next week.

He wasn’t worried about the blurry vision. (Indeed, my vision has been getting better every day, though it’s not yet where I want it to be). I reminded him about my “biggest cataract” award, he said again that the cataract was really big. “I was surprised how big it was. I really had to turn up the power on the ultrasound.” He also noted, as I’d heard him say during the surgery, that he’d put in a stitch to close up a tear, “and that’s pulling on the cornea.” He said the cornea was swollen and noted that the pressure was a bit high. He’ll take out the stitch in his office when I have my follow-up visit on Monday, 11/26.

(Ugh, lost a couple more paragraphs! Dammit! OK, gonna try again.

I had some mild discomfort the first day or so after the surgery but nothing I would characterize as actual pain. Mainly I sensed some irritation, like there was a big fat eyelash in my eye. But acetaminophen took care of any discomfort I was feeling.

Anyway, I’m hopeful my vision will continue to get better by the time I have my 11/26 follow-up visit on Monday and that it will be normal or near-normal. And let me end on this positive note….

I realized on Monday (11/19) that the colors i’m now seeing through the new lens are much truer and brighter than they were before. That’s because colors get muddied as the cataracts get cloudier and yellower. (I think the fancy doctor term for this is “brunescence,” or browning. So, on Monday, out on the front porch, i was looking at the snow through each eye separately — shutting and opening my right and left eyes in rapid succession. “Oh my gosh,” i said to myself, “snow is white, not yellow!”